The penultimate meeting of outgoing Los Banos Mayor Paul Llanez’s tenure was no less contentious than most of the others he has presided over, leaving many hoping the city’s new council will bring with it a new attitude.
“Turmoil,” said city clerk Lucy Mallonee when asked to describe the tenor of city council meetings since 2022. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen turmoil like we’ve seen over the past three years. Turmoil between council members, turmoil with city staff, turmoil with the community.”
Mike Amabile got 44 percent of the as-yet unofficial 12,477 votes cast for mayor, placing him first among three candidates. Llanez, with 21.2 percent, was last. Amabile is scheduled to be sworn in shortly after the Dec. 4 city council meeting begins. Amabile was mayor for six terms, from 1994-2006 and frequently was named the city’s “Most Honest” elected official.
The new council will have only three members – Amabile and incumbents Deborah Lewis and Kenneth Lambert. In District 1, Lambert withstood a close challenge from Tommy Leyva, winning by 118 of the 2,560 votes cast. In District 4, Lewis won with 53.3 percent of the vote.
Voters emphatically dismissed Doug Begonia Jr. and Brett Jones. Neither has attended a council meeting since Oct. 2. Until the council appoints their replacements, those seats will remain vacant.
The council might have to act quickly. Lambert told The Westside Express publisher Gene Lieb that he missed the Nov. 6 meeting due to health concerns and will miss additional meetings in January. If replacements for Begonia and Jones have not been appointed by then, the city will lack a quorum – as it did for the Nov. 6 meeting. Meanwhile, state statute requires 3 votes to pass any major spending decision by a “body” with 5 votes, meaning unanimous 3-0 votes will be required until the seats are filled.
Mallonee, a 30-year city staffer, said she has never seen such a dysfunctional council.
“With this council there was no compassion, no civility, no respect,” she said. “There were times in the past when there were issues between councilmembers, but you never knew about it from just watching the meetings — they didn’t openly disparage each other. But not with this council.”
Jones, Begonia, Llanez and Lambert formed a four-member majority who rehired Josh Pinheiro as city manager after his first tenure ended in eight months. They voted to give him $1.8 million from the city’s general fund, then to require an unprecedented unanimous 5-0 vote to fire him; they supported Pinheiro as he eliminated public budget workshops and the city lost half its workforce — including five department heads — during his tenure.
The majority also frequently disparaged, ostracized or ignored its lone dissenting voice –Lewis.
“These past two years I wasn’t made to feel like I was even an elected official or that I had a say in anything that came before the council,” said Lewis. “I’ve certainly been disrespected multiple times on the dais.”
Another example came in the Nov. 20 meeting when Lewis asked about the purchase of three new city vehicles. After public works director Charles Bergson was unable to answer how many vehicles the city owns, Llanez admonished Lewis to “stick to the agenda.”
Then Pinheiro defended the vehicle purchases, punctuating his comments by saying, “Folks, we pay our tax dollars; this is why we all pay tax dollars, to go take care of our equipment and take care of our fleet … that’s why we pay taxes, folks.”
When Lewis tried to reclaim the floor, the city manager interjected, “I’m speaking, Miss Lewis.”
When Lewis again tried to speak, Llanez cut her off, saying, “The city manager has the floor” then, “I have the button,” presumably meaning he would silence her microphone. “I still control the meeting.”
Earlier in the meeting, the city’s checkbook and investment policies caused friction. Lewis noted the millions in expenditures to be reviewed because the council hasn’t met since Oct. 2, and said she did not recognize all the payees.
Interim finance director Brent Kuhn said he would compile a list, but the mayor asked Lewis if she lacked trust in the city’s finance department.
She responded: “I don’t think that’s a question that I need to answer tonight.”
Lewis also asked Kuhn to explain the city’s investment strategy. He describe the current “inverted yield curve,” a rare situation in which short-term deposits earn higher interest returns than long-term deposits. Kuhn said that before his arrival as interim finance director, the city’s money was held in accounts that paid little or no interest.
“So, we moved that out and the rate of return has been very great since we’ve done that and the investments that I – I mean, our investments have grown considerably in the last two years.”
Since mid-2022, when the inverted yield curve began, most cities, public agencies and even individuals have made similar choices, moving their savings into those higher-yield short-term accounts when possible. It’s an obvious strategy, said former finance director Sonya Williams.
But she bristled at the implied criticism that she had missed the opportunity.
“Brent was there prior to me, he was there while I worked there and he was there after I worked there,” said Williams, who left the city in June 2022. “He was the one who worked out investments.” So, if opportunities were missed, it wasn’t due to her decisions.
Williams also pointed out that the city was building a new police station in 2020-23, and funds were kept liquid to pay for materials, contractor fees and other bills.
As for the city’s failure to replace vehicles, she said that was a policy decision made by the council.
“Go back and look. We bought cars all the time,” said Williams. She said there was even a rotation for public works vehicles. “If they have outdated cars, it’s because they chose to keep them and run them into the ground.”
Both Amabile and Lewis said during their campaigns that they want to see a forensic audit of the city’s finances dating back two years.
The tone of city council meetings has been obvious to the public. Those commenting on the Facebook page “step fwd” appear either angry or disgusted with many blaming Pinheiro.
As one commenter said, the city manager is “like a bad rash, hard to get rid of and just as irritating.”
